Destroy Morphaz

Description

There is a green drake deep in the sunken temple of Atal'Hakkar by the name of Morphaz.

Years ago, he overwhelmed me in a bold ambush and consumed my apprentice whole. While the loss of an apprentice is not unknown to me, this particular one carried an arcane shard of unsurpassed size and quality.

You must gather powerful allies and delve into the temple. Destroy Morphaz and recover the arcane shard from his ageless stomach.

Rewards

Gains

Upon completion of this quest you will gain:

11,000 experience

Related

Comments

Comment by contentious

You can't go wrong with the pendant. You'll outgrow the Glacial Spike, and the Fire Ruby is tedius if you use any other trinkets. The pendant, on the other hand, is a neck piece that grants spdmg and the 6 intellect makes it that much better.

Comment by contentious

Comment by Aelann

Morphaz is located at the bottom of Sunken Temple. He is linked to another dragon, but they are easy kills. You should definitely do this quest if you're running ST at all, and you should be running ST for some exp and items as you prepare for the Outlands.

Personally I'd go for the neck piece, because it has the longest life.

I won't comment on the fire trinket, because I'm a frost mage. However, that just gives a burst, the neck piece adds onto your damage permanantly as long as you're wearing the pendant.

Comment by dartkun

I recommend the Fire Ruby as there are a lot of better necks and weapons out there. Trinkets are not as easy to come by.

The Glacial Spike is totally useless. At 52, when you acquire this quest, Frostbolts (Rank 9) cost 225 mana. And at 6% chance to return 50 mana.

Out of 100 Frostbolts. (22500 mana) You'll get back 300 mana. (I am aware statistics don't work like that exactly, but roughly)

To comment on the Fire Ruby, although you may not be specced fire. It is still very helpful, as any spec, you should still be using fireblast. Which does receive the +damage.

If you think it is too tedious to swap trinkets, the Fire Ruby is a great PvE trinket. It's not often you'll require Insignia of the Horde/Alliance in an instance. Also the restore to Mana will help a bit in long combat in instances.

Comment by mordoc

i have wanted to do this q so much but there are no groups to do it with :( but GL to you all

Comment by sacristar

*edit* nvm, didn't read properly :x

Comment by Vonberg

With the Burning Crusade expansion, this as well as many other quests have been made irrelevant. Since you can head to Outland at level 58, by the time you reach this quest, you'll want to be grinding and instancing your way to 58. Until Blizzard updates the old Azeroth content, anything you would have quested or instanced for will be quickly replaced in Outland. It just isn't worth the investment anymore to spend that much time or effort for stuff you won't have very long.

Comment by Zanaz

post-BC Frost Mage view:

I think it is worth noting at this point that since BC came out and there are Jewelcrafters out there, the dagger looks a lot more appealing. You're no longer looking at a level 60 cap anymore where you might end up using that neck for quite a while, and the dagger will help you grind more efficiently.

As for the neck, look in the AH or ask a Jewelcrafter to make you one of these if you can:

Comment by jrodman

The necklace is an upgrade, but not a huge one. I'm frankly disappointed in the trinket. Having another button to bind and a thing to click on which just doesn't help that much, I'd rather skip. Compare with the Diamond Flask for the equivalent warrior quest which gives a large boost for around the length of a typical difficult battle: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=20130

In short, the fire trinket could use some buffing.

Comment by grevios

I think that the trinket is the best thing there. The necklace and dagger are easily replaced fairly soon, whereas the trinket can last you well into outlands, since trinkets are so much harder to come by.

Comment by zerothelegend

Only the foolish would take anything but the fire ruby. Consider how fast the dagger and necklace will be replaced, and then consider the rarity of trinkets and their functions.

Do not take anything but the fire ruby. This also applies to bad warlocks who take the staff over the voidwalker trinket; it's a bad idea.

Comment by belasarius

Post TBC these items are all pretty useless:

Necklace. If you look at http://www.wowhead.com/?item=20966 you can see you get 7 more spell damage by using a charge, as these things cost about 1g to make (or 50s to buy on AH from a levelling JC) then this a nominal cost of just 5-10s a charge. This item also buffs your group so it better for instances.

Trinket. In comparason to http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21769 this thing is just an embarrasment. It's once only use is pretty poor and will not contribute any meaningful damage over time. The mana back is nice but with mana gems, potions and evocation I rarely run short of mana, even in long fights. On use trinkets like this one I find rarely get used as often as you might think, I would prefer a simple passive trinket like http://www.wowhead.com/?item=10659 to this.

I doubt I would bother replacing my http://www.wowhead.com/?item=7714 with this. Chain casting Improved Frostbolt (2.5 seconds casting time) will only produce an average equivalent of 6 MP/5 which is pretty low. Given that you will not be casting FB's in a row and will be mixing in other spells then you really won't be getting much mana back at all. Another way of looking at this is that you will be getting an average of 3 mana back per cast of FB - that will lower your level 50 FB from 225 mana to 223! Look at it compared to this dagger http://www.wowhead.com/?item=20647 - which you can get at level 54 by popping into Silithus and asking any random 60+ to help you kill and elite for a one-step quest on an inn poster.

Basically these items need a serious buffing, I wouldn't use any of them. Compared to some of the better items for other classes in the level 50 ST class quests (eg. Diamond Flask) I find the Mage ones a big disappointment.

Comment by Saintin

screw it, i just got the dagger and vendored it.

Comment by Helkyte

I would be inclined to say that of the three the Fire Ruby is hands down the best of the rewards.

I think we can agree the mana return on the Glacial Spike is not worthwhile considering other options.

The Necklace is easily replaceable as you can see above.

The Ruby however, improves your mana efficiency, returning as someone said an average of 250 mana every 3 minutes. This is roughly 7 mp/5, though it will end up being slighly more useful than that as it will come in larger chunks, which could mean an extra cast.

The 100 fire spell bonus may seem only useful for Fire mages, but I know that leveling my Frost Mage, there is one fire spell I cast very frequently. Fire Blast! Frost is short on instants, and Cone of Cold is short range and rather mana intensive for a single target. I tend to finish off mobs with Fire Blast even as a full frost mage, as well as make use of the instant cast to do big Frostbolt/ Fire Blast Shatter combos. To make use of this trinket a simple Fire Blast macro can be used to minimize the hassle.

/use Fire Ruby/cast Fire Blast

As instants get 42.86% spell damage, you'd recieve about an extra 43 damage on Fire Blast whenever the trinket is up, as well as the mana back. An extra 65 damage on a crit in a Frostbolt/Fire Blast shatter combo.

Hardly useless for a leveling Frost Mage!

I would encourage any leveling Frost Mage to take the Fire Ruby for juicy Shatter combos

Comment by bretm

As a class-specific quest, this does not count toward Loremaster of Kalimdor.

Comment by Bludstain

Someone quoted that instant casts get 42.86% spell damage. Does this apply to a brain freeze instant fireball? My guess would be it does because ultimately it is instant.

Comment by Moodknight

fire spec ppl, go for the trinket, then dont be lazy do the myzrael chain q for the http://www.wowhead.com/?item=4743, not awesome neck in the same way like this rew but better than everything above i think. Indeed there is a nice dagger or sword for one hand+offhand....I go with a 2h all the time, more stats, more sp, this blade blows anyway...+1 to http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21769, best alt i think. if ur JC then take the neck, forget about all above xD

Comment by XinR

Is this quest given after you get the dust stuff form the Belfs in Azshara?

Comment by Mizilca

As of Patch 4.01, all class quests for the Sunken Temple have been removed